Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the most important decision on fair housing in a generation. He’ll almost certainly get to see it overturned in his lifetime.
When Kennedy announced his long-rumored retirement on Wednesday, he shined a spotlight on the tenuous political balance of the U.S. Supreme Court. Famously a swing vote, Kennedy sided with the court’s four liberal justices on defining decisions on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and other hot-button social issues.
— City Lab
The "disparate impact" ruling of the Fair Housing Act is now being reconsidered by HUD. This could lead to the department repealing altogether, despite the fact that the Supreme Court already affirmed its constitutionality. Justice Kennedy's legacy of further integrating society is vulnerable to... View full entry
The American Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) has criticised the Trump Administration over the introduction of 25% tariffs on $50bn of Chinese imports.
Chinese goods affected include types of construction and agricultural equipment. [...]
Since Trump’s trade announcement on Friday, China has said it will impose a similar 25% tariff, also worth $50bn.
— globalconstructionreview.com
"We’re extremely disappointed with the Trump administration’s decision to move forward with these harmful tariffs," said Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) President Dennis Slater in a statement last Friday. "This move jeopardizes many of the 1.3 million good-paying manufacturing... View full entry
The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention.
The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children...
— mcclatchydc.com
Over 11,200 migrant children are held without a parent or guardian by The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS who oversees around 100 shelters. As these shelters fill up with children separated from their parents, the Trump administration considers building tent cities to accommodate this... View full entry
President Donald Trump took a firsthand look today at the eight massive border wall prototypes that he had commissioned in San Diego for the “big, beautiful wall” he wants to build along the Southwest border, favoring a mixture of see-through capability topped with rounded concrete to make it impassable by climbers. — San Diego Union Tribune
It's been a busy Tuesday morning for Donald Trump today: after firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via a 5:44 AM Tweet, he traveled to San Diego to personally inspect the 8 border wall prototypes that had been erected last fall mere yards away from the actual U.S. border with Mexico. One of... View full entry
The US construction industry may lose more than 28,000 jobs if Donald Trump’s plan to raise tariffs on imported steel and aluminium goes ahead, a pro-free trade think tank has warned. [...]
While Trump claims tariffs would create jobs in America’s steel and aluminium sectors, a Washington, DC, thinktank, Trade Partnership, warned that such a policy would “reverberate throughout” the economy, costing more jobs than it would gain as it pushed up the cost of the metals.
— Global Construction Review
Unswayed by warnings from top economists, industry groups, and members of his own party, Donald Trump today signed two tariff proclamations at the White House that will erect 25% and 10% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports respectively. While the administration claims that the import tariffs... View full entry
The proposed $25 billion wall along the US/Mexico border raises questions that have proven divisive to society. [...]
In 2017 and 2018, AIA state components and chapters in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas wrote resolutions and letters with the support of their boards of directors opposing a border wall and questioning its cost-benefit relative to infrastructure projects all over the country that they deem higher-priority.
— AIA
AIA state components and chapters in each of the four states bordering Mexico—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—are organizing their opposition to Trump's border wall proposal and have passed formal resolutions. "Robert Miller, AIA, 2018 president of AIA Arizona, led the charge in... View full entry
In a 10-1 vote, the Austin City Council took the first step toward a boycott of any company that designs, builds or finances President Donald Trump’s $25 billion proposed border wall between Texas and Mexico. [...]
Four companies already have been tapped to design and build wall prototypes, including Texas-based Sterling Construction Company, Inc.
— KXAN
The Texas state capital is just the latest of several local and state governments having either passed or proposed legislation that would ban companies involved in designing, building, or financing Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico from being considered for other public contracts. View full entry
The slabs in front of me seemed at once the most and least architectural objects I’d ever seen. They were banal and startling, full and empty of meaning. Here were the techniques of Land Art, medieval construction, marketing and promotion, architectural exhibition and the new nativism rolled uncomfortably if somehow inevitably into one. — Los Angeles Times
LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne takes a trip down to the U.S.-Mexican border in San Diego to attempt the challenge of critiquing Trump's border wall prototypes, "alternating bands of substance and absence, aspiration and impossibility". Image: U.S. Customs and Border Protection. View full entry
The Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems was created by the Obama administration in 2015 within the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its chairman, Jesse Keenan, told members at a meeting Monday that its charter was being dissolved and that meeting would be its last. — Bloomberg
The Trump administration is pulling the plug on the Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems—a group created in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that helped local officials prepare for extreme weather and other natural disasters. The multi-agency organization... View full entry
Following recent developments the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made in various versions in both the House and the Senate, the American Institute of Architects announced that it would lobby aggressively against "significant inequities" the legislation currently represents. Back in September, the AIA... View full entry
Otherwise known as POPS or POPOS, pseudo-public space is often offered up by developers in exchange for the city giving them permission to add more floors or density than the current zoning allows for. An incentive pioneered in NYC's 1961 zoning ordinance revision, today, there are more than... View full entry
The prototypes for Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed, and the six participating companies, whose names have been publicly released, are beginning to face some serious pushback. Since the bidding process began, companies vying for the construction contract... View full entry
[...] prototypes for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico have been completed and will be subjected to punishment to test their mettle — by workers wielding sledgehammers, torches, pickaxes and battery-operated tools.
The testing lasting up to two months could lead to officials concluding that elements of several designs should be merged to create effective walls [...]. That raises the possibility of no winner or winners.
— Associated Press
The six companies that were awarded contracts to build prototypes of Trump's border wall with Mexico earlier this year have completed their full-scale models on a site near San Diego and will see their creations undergo rigorous testing for nonclimbability, nonunderdiggability, and resistance to... View full entry
Detroit was the first North American city to obtain such a designation, which joined it to UNESCO's Creative Cities Network — a group 22 international cities whose aim is "to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. — Detroit Metro Times
Earlier this week, president Trump announced the U.S's withdrawal from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias and mounting arrears. The decision could affect Detroit's 'City of Design' designation, earlier awarded to the Detroit Creative Corridor, a non-profit initiative to strengthen Detroit's... View full entry
The 10 fastest-growing U.S. solar markets between the second quarters of 2016 and 2017 were Western, Midwestern or Southern states that voted for Trump, with Alabama and Mississippi topping the list. And solar firms are ramping up investments in these regions, signaling their faith that key renewable energy incentives will remain in place for years to come. — Reuters
Despite Trump's disbelief in solar power, the sector is booming in his partisan states. The growth of clean energy, particularly in the regions that showed overwhelming support for Trump, greatly undermines the president's goal of boosting the coal industry. View full entry
